Censorship Isn't What It Used to Be

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Censorship Isn't What It Used to Be

The word "censorship" is used so often, in such varied contexts and for such contrasting purposes that it has little meaning at all. It sails over our heads, part of the blah-blah debate that passes for civic discussion. There's no consensus in our culture about what censorship is, who censors, or how we feel about the issue.

In America, we are approaching the surreal point - as freewheeling popular culture collides with the information revolution at the crossroads of the digital age - where we have more information available to us than ever, and more people trying to curb or ban it.

We have never been comfortable as a people with institutionalized censorship, nor can we seem to get comfortable with all this freedom. We tilt in one direction, then the other, never finding balance or reaching consensus. But for the unleashing of so much information by new-media technologies, we might just keep tilting, maintaining this standoff forever.

Although we always tend to see censors as Others, we are all censors at different points in our lives. The parent who forbids a child to speak cruelly is a censor, as is a state legislature that makes it a crime to file false police reports. Nor would most of us uncomplainingly accept sado-masochistic dramas to be aired during after-school hours.

There are many things teachers don't let students say; or employees won't accept from bosses; messages friends won't tolerate from one another; and an array of racial, sexual, and ethnic jokes and slurs that are no longer permissible in public expression.

Certain parents, politicians, and other moral guardians find it intolerable to put young people in any kind of direct contact with even benign sexual material. Others have urged boycotts of advertisers that sponsor offending TV shows, campaigned to keep programs like NYPD Blue, or Beavis & Butt-head off local affiliates or cable channels, and forced music companies to divest themselves of rap labels. Some feminists found the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt unacceptable. Wal-Mart will only sell music CDs it deems moral, a practice many consider not only acceptable, but overdue and admirable.

In different ways and for different reasons, all these people are practicing different kinds of censorship.

A certain amount of censorship in any society and among most families is not only inevitable but appropriate. Discussion of censorship has to begin with this consciousness: the issue isn't whether censorship ought to exist (I am using the term in the broader sense of restricting expression, not the narrower governmental definition), but how much, where, and when.

The digital world is particularly rife with debate about censorship, thanks partly to the fight over the Communications Decency Act. As an extraordinarily free information culture, the very existence of the Net and the Web constantly raise issues about the control of ideas and information, from pornography to the transmission of hate material.

Writers have especially strong feelings about censorship, for obvious reasons that sometimes set them apart from others. They are not disinterested parties.

Writers are often in conflict with authority and government, and they are among the first affected by prohibitions on language or ideas, from which they derive their livelihood. Censorship feels like a kind of personal assault to them, and they dread it and react to even the hint of it in a viscerally resistant way. This is also true of netizens. Hannah Arendt wrote that revolutions occurs when people experience the twin sensations of being free and creating something new. In that sense, everyone online is a revolutionary. They relish no experience more than that of being free, often for the first time in their lives. So concerns about curbs on their freedom is heightened, sometimes in sharp contrast to people outside this culture.

Parents, ministers, teachers, and politicians, even some academics, find some censorship perfectly logical. There's a lot of garbage out there, much of it violent, degrading, or prurient, some of it dangerous. Why not just ban or block it? There's something almost morally symmetrical about this idea - new technology brings it into the house, the same technology can keep it out.

People have, in fact, being doing just that for thousands of years.

The word "censor" comes from Rome; it referred to a magistrate whose duties included overseeing morals and conduct.

On the Internet, "censor" is never a complimentary or neutral administrative term. Hackers, geeks, and webheads consider themselves open-minded and passionately committed to the idea that information wants to be free. Try advancing the idea that censorship is a necessary tool for living in the information revolution and you'll quickly see exactly how free this information wants to be.

Yet new definitions of equality and morality, combined with an explosion in media and information technology, have dramatically altered the discussion of censorship, broadening the number of people who believe some curbs should be applied on media and popular culture, including many people for whom curbs on free speech has always been anathema.

In a series that will span this week and next, I'll look at the striking new reality of censorship.

I'll explore how the impulse to shape and restrict speech has shifted in historic ways from state-run censorship beaurocracies like those run by Communists and supporters of apartheid to intellectuals, educators, liberals, and journalists, as well as our traditional moral guardians and politicians.

Is there a new moral position on censorship that transcends the knee-jerk rhetoric of absolutists on both sides?

Can we protest the immoral and irresponsible behavior of media and some elements of popular culture and remain true to the unrestricted movement of ideas? I'll offer my ideas and solutions. Hopefully, you'll offer yours.